China News Service, Hong Kong, February 9th (Reporter Wei Huadu) PricewaterhouseCoopers, an internationally renowned accounting firm, held a press conference in Hong Kong on the 9th and said that it predicts that the total sales value of Hong Kong's retail industry will increase by about 13% in 2023.

  Zheng Huanran, managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers' consumer market industry in Asia Pacific, Mainland China and Hong Kong, said at the press conference that looking back on 2022, the tightening of epidemic prevention measures, inflation, poor performance of the stock market and real estate, and the public's fourth Factors such as "retaliatory outbound travel" in the second half of the year have led to a decline in the total sales value of Hong Kong's overall retail industry throughout the year.

However, due to the fact that citizens shop more online during the epidemic, the value of online retail sales in the whole year recorded a year-on-year increase.

  Zheng Huanran believes that the outlook for Hong Kong's consumer market this year is optimistic and is expected to rebound.

He said that the local tourism industry is gradually recovering this year, and it is estimated that 20 million tourists will come to Hong Kong, which is one-third of the peak period in 2018.

The SAR government distributes consumer coupons and free air tickets to tourists, which will help the tourism and retail industries to restart.

Coupled with the support of a strong yuan, he expects department stores and luxury goods to grow by about 40% each, while clothing, footwear and related products will grow by about 20%.

  In terms of online retail, he expects that online sales of Hong Kong's retail industry will continue to grow this year, but at a slower rate.

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